


i've learned to lose you (can't afford to)

by petitepeach



Series: in a peculiar universe [2]
Category: SKAM (France), WTFock | Skam (Belgium)
Genre: Crossover madness, M/M, Prompt Fill, What Have I Done, eliott is a good bro, kind of a character study for sander, lucas is himself, trying to figure out wtf is happening with him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-19
Updated: 2019-11-19
Packaged: 2021-02-13 11:50:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21493819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petitepeach/pseuds/petitepeach
Summary: While Sander’s first instinct would normally be to make a lame joke or change the subject completely, instead he sits back on his heels, takes a deep breath and asks, “Did you ever…hurt anyone?”Eliott tilts his head. “Because you tried too hard not to?”“No. Because you meant to.”in which an empty art studio is as good a place as any to bare your soul to a stranger
Relationships: Eliott Demaury/Lucas Lallemant, Robbe Ijzermans/Sander Driesen
Series: in a peculiar universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1549171
Comments: 29
Kudos: 341





	i've learned to lose you (can't afford to)

**Author's Note:**

> for anon, who asked what it would be like if eliott and sander were friends, and if sander were to ask him for advice on how to un-fuck everything
> 
> i took the prompt and ran with it because i was in desperate need of some catharsis for the last few weeks 💛 after all, one of the reasons i started posting skam france fanfic was as a coping mechanism 🤠
> 
> title from "when the party's over" by billie eilish don't @ me it fits perfectly

He thinks about him, and the charcoal in his hand slips, a slow, even curve that goes jagged, a thick black line breaking his canvas in half.

He wants to knock the canvas to the ground. He wants to tear it to pieces. He wants to ignite it with a match.

The skin over his eye still pulls, the bruise along his cheekbone still stings.

Everything fucking hurts.

Sander drops his piece of charcoal down to the easel and turns away from the canvas, running his hands up the back of his head and scrubbing them through his hair, not caring that he’s getting black fingerprints stuck in the bleached strands.

He can’t even draw. That’s been taken away from him, too.

_Not taken away. _There’s a voice in his head, a voice that sounds like rocks against windows and cracking ice. _This hasn’t been stolen from you, you lost it didn’t you, you lost him, you lost your heart, you lost your mind—_

He doesn’t stop walking until he reaches the far wall of the empty studio, leaning his forehead against cold glass, his body slumping forwards. He tries to take deep, even breaths, tries to find something to centre himself on, but when he closes his eyes all he sees is Robbe.

He dreamt about him last night, about the space at the base of his neck, right above his collarbone. He dreamt about pressing his face into that spot, surrounded by soft, warm skin and that clean cotton smell that’s always attached to Robbe’s clothes. He dreamt about feeling the vibrations of Robbe’s gentle laughter under his cheek, about Robbe running his hands through his hair and saying, _Sander. I love you_.

He woke up sweating, tangled in threadbare sheets, faced with the early-morning blackness of Antwerp. He’d wanted nothing more than to sink back into that dream, and to never leave it.

Being awake is a curse.

He takes another breath, pressing his forehead further into the glass and he’s listing off different shades of black in his head to try to find something to focus on, and it’s working, a bit.

_pure black, onyx, eigengrau, xiketic_

“Sander?”

He startles, knocking the side of his head against the wall as he stumbles back, whipping around to the studio doorway.

That French guy is standing there. The exchange student. The one with the annoyingly perfect blending technique.

_Eliott_, his brain supplies.

Eliott has one hand gripping onto the strap of his backpack and he’s staring at Sander with his eyebrows furrowed, his mouth turned down at the corners.

“Is everything okay?” He asks, then bites down on his lip, regretful, like he knows there’s only one possible answer to that question when you find someone collapsing into a wall in an empty studio on a Friday afternoon.

Sander blinks. “I didn’t think anybody would still be here,” he says flatly.

Eliott shrugs. “Yeah, well.” He gestures vaguely to the hallway behind him. “I had to finish some stuff and I needed lots of space for it…” Then he grins, bouncing on the spot. “And anyway I have to wait for Lucas. He’s coming here from the train station.”

Right. Lucas. The famous boyfriend back in Paris.

_His name is Lucas_, Sander heard him gushing to Greta one day in class, excitedly scrolling through the camera roll on his phone. _He’s a science student, still in Lycée. He’s amazing. He’s so smart and funny, and he’s so thoughtful, but he doesn’t always let people know that._

Out of curiosity, Sander had craned his neck forward to see the screen of Eliott’s phone. And yeah, not bad. Cute. Really cute, actually, with wide, clear eyes and a full, teasing smile. But, personally, Sander has always preferred brown eyes over blue.

“Right,” he says to Eliott, and he doesn’t know what else to do, so he walks back to his easel, taking his canvas down and propping it up in the corner of the room reserved for unfinished works.

There’s the sound of a phone going off and Sander turns towards it, heart soaring, but he sees Eliott pulling his phone out of his pocket and he’s smiling down at the screen, rapidly typing out a reply, and Sander’s heart sinks back down to the bottom of the ocean. He crouches to the ground and gathers his charcoal back into its box, securing it with an elastic band, his face burning.

What was he even expecting? Why would Robbe message him when he knows, he _knows_ Robbe saw Britt’s Instagram post, and he heard Robbe was at that party which means he saw them together and he must _hate_ him but that was what Sander wanted, wasn’t it?

“Hey. Sander.”

Sander glances up from where he’s packing his bag and Eliott is staring back at him, tapping his phone against his chest.

“I don’t want to be…prying. But you, uh, you seem like you’re having a hard time right now. So, if you want to talk about it, we can. Talk about it. And if you don’t want to, then…we don’t have to.”

Eliott is fumbling through this speech, giving it in stops and starts of heavily-accented English but he holds Sander’s eyes the entire time, and Sander has always respected straightforward people, but more than anything else, he’s struck by the care colouring Eliott’s words into soft pastels across the harsh white of the studio, the concern painted clearly across his face in shades Sander had forgotten existed.

He really doesn’t know the last time someone worried about him.

Apart from Robbe.

This is why, while Sander’s first instinct would normally be to make a lame joke or change the subject completely, instead he sits back on his heels, takes a deep breath and asks, “Did you ever…hurt anyone?”

Eliott tilts his head. “Because you tried too hard not to?”

“No. Because you meant to.”

Now there’s something dawning behind Eliott’s eyes, something that looks a bit like reluctant understanding. Or, perhaps, undesirable understanding.

Eliott asks, “Does this have something to do with that boy? The one that came at the end of class.”

For all that Sander’s brain has thought of nothing but _Robbe, Robbe, Robbe_ for weeks, it’s nearly impossible for him to say his name aloud. “Yeah. Robbe.”

He doesn’t think he deserves to say it. The word is too sweet on his tongue. It tastes too much like the last time he said it, when Robbe was swaying towards him on his bar stool and flashes of blue and purple light were playing tag across his face and he was so beautiful, so delicate and so mesmerizing and somehow, impossibly, he was Sander’s.

He was.

Eliott sighs, and leans against the doorframe, his backpack sliding down his arm to the floor.

“It never works the way you think it will.”

Sander’s head snaps up. Eliott is staring at a spot just over his shoulder. There’s a faint line between his eyebrows.

“At one point,” Eliott says at length, “I didn’t think I could ever have what I have with Lucas. I didn’t think that sort of thing was meant for someone like me.”

“That sort of thing.” Sander echoes dubiously.

Eliott’s eyes snap over to him. “Love.” He says simply. “Being in love. Being loved. Without any, uh…” He waves a hand out, searching for the word. “_Inconditionnel_.”

“Unconditional.” Sander nods. “Yeah. It’s similar in English.” He sees a loose thread in the knee of his jeans and he tugs at it, tearing a hole open at the seam. He’s hoping Eliott will keep going, will give him something solid to latch onto, but he seems to be waiting Sander out now, like he knows Sander’s only given him the prologue to the story.

Sander wants to tell him. And he doesn’t want to. Because saying it aloud will make it more real, in a way. It’s as if, as long as the words stay buried inside of him, there’s still a chance that this is a dream Sander will wake up from, and when he wakes up he’ll be a different version of himself. One who’s normal and can love and be loved like a normal person and won’t have a built-in self destruct button.

“I…” He keeps his eyes fixed on the hole in his jeans, pulls harder on the thread. “I hurt him. Because I needed him to hate me.”

Eliott’s voice is very soft when he asks, “Why?”

“Because being with me…it was ruining his life.” The words feel dramatic coming out and Sander drops the thread, falls back onto his ass and throws his arms out, palms flat. “I know how that sounds, but it’s true. He was so messed up from kissing me that he…he said shitty things. He said he thought I drugged him, as if I could _ever—_and then, then, we, one night we went out and we…” Without even realizing it, Sander’s hand has drifted up to his eye. He lowers his hands to his thighs, digging into the muscle there. “Something happened. Something that was really bad and he got hurt and I. I can’t see him hurt like that. Ever again.” He drops his head to his knee, eyes shut tightly. “From the moment he met me, his life went to shit. I was ruining him. I was.” He doesn’t realize he’s crying until his voice breaks on the last word and there’s something wet sliding down to the tip of his nose and he wipes it across his jeans, coughing to try and mask the sound.

God what a fucking mess Sander has made. He’s fucked with everything good in his life and now he’s crying in front of a French guy he barely knows and it’s all just…a fucking mess. There’s no way out.

“_D’accord_.” Eliott says quietly from his post at the door. Sander hears him shifting on the spot, then his phone buzzing in his pocket, and for a brief moment, Sander hates him. He hates his buzzing phone, hates how Eliott gets to wait for someone and Eliott gets to message someone and Eliott will get to kiss someone today, probably. Someone he loves. Someone who loves him. The jealousy is a violent flash of lightning that surges through him, makes his fingers tremble.

It makes him spit the rest out coldly, bitterly, pure black tar from between his teeth.

“We were victims of a hate crime.” He says. “These guys, they saw us kissing and they beat the shit out of us, left us on the street. And do you know what I did? I abandoned him. When he really needed me. I got back together with my girlfriend. I stopped responding to his messages. I let him see that we’re back together.” He laughs and the sound hurts on its way out. “He must wish he never met me.”

He’s expecting Eliott to leave at this, to realize this is way more fucked up than he thought it would be when he first decided to play the caring classmate. Maybe he’ll shoot Sander a look of disgust for good measure. What he’s not expecting is for Eliott to take a step away from the wall, a step towards Sander, his face marred with worry.

“Wait. What the fuck. A hate crime? Did you report it to the police?”

It sucks the lightning storm out of Sander’s veins, that worry. His head drops down on his shoulders.

“It wouldn’t do anything.” He says. _I can’t_, he doesn’t say. _I’ve been in the wrong place at the wrong time before and it’s not good for me_, he doesn’t say.

Eliott is shaking his head. “It would. Saying it out loud means it happened. It’s real.”

And fuck if Eliott isn’t tapped directly into Sander’s head. It makes him shiver.

“I’m so sorry.” Eliott says. “No one should ever have to experience that.”

Before Sander realizes what’s happening, Eliott is coming over, he’s kneeling down onto the floor in front of him and he’s pulling him into an awkward, long-armed hug, and he’s saying it again, “I’m so sorry.”

Out of every possibility Sander considered for this conversation, he didn’t imagine this.

It’s like his body can’t decide if it wants to pull away or fold in closer, locking up in indecision and leaving his arms hanging limply at his sides.

He hates that a relative stranger is comforting him like this, seeing him so broken and vulnerable, so laid bare, but at the same time it feels so fucking good to be held, to be looked after, that he doesn’t ever want the hug to end.

Then Eliott is the one pulling away, planting his hands on Sander’s shoulders.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, in a rush, “I shouldn’t have done that without asking. But it really looked like you needed it.”

Sander stares at him. He thinks his mouth might be hanging open.

Eliott squeezes his shoulders. “You need to know: what happened to you wasn’t your fault. You didn’t do anything to cause it, and you did nothing to deserve it.” Eliott blinks and his own eyes are wet. Sander looks down to break his gaze, everything feeling to raw and too wrought for him to handle.

All he can say is, “Yeah. Well. Maybe.”

“And you should know,” Eliott continues, “that you’re not helping him by deciding he’s better off without you. You can’t decide for other people what will make them happy. You can’t decide what’s good for them.” He drops his hands from Sander’s shoulders, and falls back, mirroring Sander’s posture. “I tried that, with Lucas. I tried to push him away because I thought he would better off without having to deal with me. I thought he wouldn’t be able to handle what being with me is really like.”

Sander shifts on the spot, a bit uncomfortably, because there’s that feeling again. It’s like Eliott can see the inside of his head, can take the tangled web of his thoughts and unravel it to something tangible. Flawed and tragic, but true.

“I didn’t trust him.” Eliott says. “I underestimated him, which is something I did a lot in the beginning.” A small smile pulls at the corner of his mouth. “But he keeps surprising me.”

“How could I ever fix this?” The words pour out of Sander in frustration, curling around his face like smoke. “I’ve fucked up too much. Too much to be forgiven.”

“Robbe may surprise you, too.”

Fuck.

The very idea of it, of seeing Robbe again, of explaining himself to him, of Robbe forgiving him.

The very idea of being able to hold him again.

It sets Sander afire from the inside out.

“You need to be completely honest with him.” Eliott says. His phone buzzes in his pocket and he slowly stands from his spot on the ground, brushing off the back of his jeans. “And with yourself. You need to show him how you feel but you also need to tell him. You need to make it right. For both of you.” Eliott bends down to retrieve his backpack. “And Sander…” He pauses. “Maybe it’s not my place to say this, but I think you really need to report that attack. Together.”

Sander feels a bit like crying, and a bit like laughing, inappropriately enough. There’s too much happening inside of his head, there is always is, but it’s too much in a way that feels like being awake is necessary. It’s important.

“How did you do that?” Sander asks, staring up at Eliott. “How did you know exactly what to say to me? You don’t even know me.”

Eliott smiles, and it’s sweet and bitter. “Maybe, but I think we’re very similar, actually. I think we both try to…hm. _Comportement autodestructeur_.”

“Self-destructive.” Sander fills in automatically.

Eliott nods. “We are both like that, and it made us lose the best parts of ourselves. Lucas, he fought for me. He fought for us, and so we found each other again. I don’t want to imagine what it would be like for me if he hadn’t. I don’t want to imagine that for you either, if Robbe makes you feel the same way Lucas makes me feel. So. You have to fight for him. That is what I’m saying.”

Sander digs the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Jesus _Christ_.”

“I don’t mean to—”

“No.” He cuts Eliott off, pushing himself up from the ground. He’s shaky as he tries to stand. “No, it’s. You’re right. I know you are. It’s just a lot.” He takes a long, deep breath, and he’s listing off shades of brown in his head for something to focus on, something to keep him from crumpling back down to the ground.

_chestnut, raw umber, taupe, wenge, robbe’s hair, robbe’s eyes_

“Hey.” Eliott’s interrupting him again, driving a wedge in front of the runaway train of his mind. “How about you come with me? You can meet Lucas. Get a drink with us, and we can talk. He can give you advice on how to be brave.”

Eliott’s grinning as he says it, a look in his eyes like he’s kidding but he’s also not, and Sander knows he’s not, because he actually could use some pointers on being brave right about now, when all he’s wanted for the last week is to disappear from the face of the Earth. To do nothing but go to sleep.

It’s so much more difficult, being awake.

“Will he mind?” He asks, sliding the strap of his messenger bag onto his shoulder.

If anything, Eliott’s smiles grows wider. “Nope. He’s been saying for weeks that he wants to meet my Belgian friends.”

Friends.

Yeah. Sander thinks he could really use some friends right now.

Eliott and Sander are outside of the school’s entrance for only a few minutes, watching the sun set and sharing a cigarette, and then there’s a tiny blur crashing into Eliott from out of nowhere, latching its arms around his neck and climbing onto his back, nearly knocking Eliott over with the momentum.

Sander watches with a small smile forming on his face, what feels like the first in a long, long time.

“Eliott!” The blur cries happily, and then he’s speaking in rapid-fire French, his metropolitan accent managing to sound lazy and rushed at the same time, his vowels melting together to form one long stream of exclamations.

Sander manages to catch something about a nightmarish train ride, a desperate need to eat something, and then, when his feet are back on the ground and Eliott has turned around to face him, _I missed you so much. My love._

They kiss, and it’s slow, soft and intimate and Sander looks away, taking a drag off the cigarette. He checks his phone but the only notification is from Britt, telling him that he left a sweater at her place, and she doesn’t want to keep it but she also doesn’t want to bring it to him, so he’ll have to drop by to pick it up himself.

Sander sighs.

_I’ll come by tomorrow, _he replies. He wants to tell her she can just give it away, or throw it out, he doesn’t care, but he can guess that for her, it’s for closure. Something she can do to tell Sander that she’s over it, over him, and Sander doesn’t want to take that away from her.

He owes her that, at least.

“Hello.” Another heavily-accented voice is saying to him, cutting through his thoughts. His head snaps up and the boy/blur himself is standing in front of him, offering a hand to shake. Eliott is next to him, an arm draped across his shoulders. “I am Lucas.” He announces, like he’s the king of France declaring himself to a pauper, and Sander already likes him.

“Sander,” he says, shaking Lucas’s hand.

“Eliott says you are coming with us for drinks?”

Sander shrugs. He flicks the cigarette to the ground and smothers it with the toe of his boot. “Yeah.”

Lucas squints at him, biting down on his lip. Sander tilts his head to stare back at him, not sure what Lucas is looking for, if he’s measuring him up to determine if he’s worthy to be Eliott’s friend, or if he’s trying to extrapolate on the inner workings of his heart just from what’s written across his face. Sander wonders if Lucas can read _wasteland_ somewhere along the lines of his forehead or in the hollows of his eyes. When Sander woke up this morning, that was all he could see when he looked in the mirror.

Lucas must find something satisfactory in his appraisal, because he’s nodding, and Eliott leans close to whisper something into his hair and Lucas smiles, something soft and sad, and he says, “_Ah, oui. D’accord_.” He slips out from Eliott’s arm and steps froward, gripping onto Sander’s wrist. “Come on. You will pick the bar and Eliott will pay for the drinks.”

Eliott makes an indignant, protesting noise at this, but Lucas waves him off.

“It’s an emergency, Eli! We have to get him vodka and make a plan.”

Sander is staring down at Lucas, feeling a bit like he’s being pulled into a tornado. “A plan for what?”

“For how you will fix it.” Lucas says, as if it’s obvious. Sander throws a look at Eliott over his shoulder, wondering just how much of Sander’s private life he’s shared, and Eliott shrugs like maybe he overstepped but he’s not sorry about it.

Lucas is practically yelling into his ear. “We need somewhere with good food and cheap alcohol.”

And Sander, who’s thinking about being brave, being honest, being vulnerable and being able to hear Robbe’s voice, to press his cheek to that spot at the base of his neck, he points down the street, towards the centre of town.

“That way,” he says.

“Good.” Lucas says. He reaches back for Eliott’s hand, pulling him along with them. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! 🧡
> 
> on tumblr [@lepetitepeach](https://lepetitepeach.tumblr.com)


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